Transcript

00:00:01

>> A Russian plan for keeping hooligans away from the World Cup may have a big loophole. After scenes like this in France two years ago involving its fans, Moscow is under big pressure ahead of this year's event. It's blacklisted suspected trouble makers, and says they won't get into games.

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But documents seen by Reuters suggests the ban may be easy to get around. This man, Pavel Cherkas, applied for and received a World Cup Fan ID, despite being blacklisted for being drunk at a match. After Reuters raised the issue with Russian authorities, his ID was revoked without explanation.

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Reuters' Gabrielle Tetrault-Farber says this highlights a wider issue.>> Russian legislation put this blacklist in place but there's actually no way to enforce it properly. Because there is no legislation that requires the organizers of sporting events to actually require identification. To make sure that people are checked when they go into venues, to know who is coming into your stadium.

> No one asks for our passports, we enter sporting venues freely and this ban just won't work in Russia.>> Reuters hasn't found any of the cases of blacklisted fans obtaining World Cup IDs.

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But there are also questions about who is on Russia's list.>> The Russian Interior Ministry blacklist contains more than 400 names. We found that a third of these people were being banned for lighting flares. Firecrackers, smoke bombs, at soccer matches and other sporting events, but mostly soccer matches.

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Another 20% of these people are being banned for public drunkenness, at sporting events. We looked at all the court cases that we could find of these people on this blacklist. There are actually very few cases of explicit violence.>> When the tournament kicks off on June the 14th, the world will find out if Russia has targeted the right people after all.